


go anywhere i want (just not home)

by PanBoleyn



Series: say you'll remember me (say you'll see me again) [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Discussion of Canonical Suicide, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Quentin Coldwater Lives, technically canon compliant-ish but NOT s5 friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:21:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26735809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: Quentin comes back from the dead and promptly leaves town. He believes he'll never belong again, and the best idea he has is to become a nomad.But the truth is, he really wants to come home. He just doesn't think he has one.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: say you'll remember me (say you'll see me again) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2130687
Comments: 51
Kudos: 191
Collections: A Million Little Times





	go anywhere i want (just not home)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Hope this finds you well! 
> 
> This is my entry for the Queliot Folklore event, and my song was 'my tears ricochet'. Obviously, the lyric I used for my title was the base of the story, but I used multiple lyrics as inspiration for this song. Ever since I've heard it it's been THE song for my 'ghost trapped in the ambient' headcanon for Q, and I loved using it to tell the story of what happened to him afterwards. 
> 
> Warnings here include discussion of Quentin's suicide, various points when he wonders if he should have stayed dead or other death-related thoughts, general discussion of the last parts of 4.13, and coping mechanisms both healthy and unhealthy. If I missed anything, please let me know. 
> 
> Thanks to my enablers, as ever, and also to my Person M, whose road trip currently happening helped me with some of the places Quentin sees. <3

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to us, Quentin.” 

Quentin zips up the small duffel bag without responding or even turning around - the only clothing he owns is what he was able to order online, since the Brakebills infirmary has a spell on it that means tech is more functional here than most of campus. The rest of his things were long since trashed, donated, or burned, after all. Only after the bag is closed does he sigh and turn to where Julia, Alice, and Margo are ranged in front of the door as if to block his exit. 

“I’m not doing anything  _ to  _ you, Julia. I’m doing something  _ for  _ me.” 

“You’re punishing us for moving on,” Alice cuts in before Julia can say anything. “What were we supposed to do, Quentin? Mourn you forever?” 

“No, he wanted us to tear a literal world apart like the fucking Dark King,” Margo says, eyes narrowed. “After all, he didn’t mind stealing our magic to save himself - did you know Eliot got stuck doing time loops because one of the spells you stole from was the one we were doing to fix the moon and save the world?” 

Quentin looks at Alice and Margo’s clasped hands, thinks of the way Alice had abruptly told him, the first time he’d woken to find her alone in the chair by his bed, that she was glad he was alive but he needed to know that while he was dead and she was in New Fillory, she and Margo had fallen in love. He considers saying,  _ You two came in here brandishing your honeymoon phase, are you sure you aren’t the ones trying to punish me?  _

But he doesn’t. All he says is, “I didn’t realize you guys knew that was me.” That it was him who’d siphoned off magic enough from the world spell that there’s a weird black hole pit near New Fillory’s equator. That it was him who swiped enough magic from Rupert Chatwin’s Underworld spell that there weren’t even rocks floating in space left of the planet Fillory, which under other circumstances there might have been.

That he drained what magic remained from the defunct Fillory clock - for New Fillory they use a wardrobe Eliot and Julia enchanted, very Narnia - so that it collapsed in pieces. And, of course, that he stole magic from their cooperative moon spell, and may have been the reason it failed. 

“We know,” Alice says. “And you aren’t sorry at all, are you?” 

“No,” Quentin says flatly. “I’m not. I did what I had to do, just like you. And that’s what I’m doing now too. What I have to do.” 

“Why do you have to leave?” Julia asks. “Q, we’ll forgive the magic stealing - you were a ghost trapped in the ambient, and the power is how you rebuilt your body and came back from the dead, you didn’t really ruin anything in the long run -” 

“When did I ask for forgiveness? I just said I’m not sorry and I meant it. I don’t want or need to be forgiven,” Quentin cuts her off. “Look, Julia, this isn’t about you, not about any of you. You guys moved on. You had to, for your own well-being. I’m glad. Despite what you might think, Alice, I didn’t want you to mourn me forever, I wanted, I want all of you to be happy. But you’re asking me to respect that your lives have changed, while I… what? Exist on the margins, in whatever little space you’re willing to grant me?” 

“You could have stopped us from building New Fillory!” Margo says, crossing her arms. “You should be glad we still want you around after that.”

“And if I had, the Fillorians were safe in the pocket world. But I knew I wouldn’t be taking that much, Margo. The moon spell… was something of a mistake, and I learned how to control what I took better because of it. In fact, the energy I took probably saved the spell from killing you. I was just frustrated with the moon thing because I’d been trying to get your attention and all I got for it was a piece of myself forever out of reach.” 

“That isn’t fair,” Alice says. “I was trying to give it back to you.” 

“I know that, Alice,” Quentin says, throwing up his hands. “I’m not accusing you! I’m not accusing anyone! I’m just saying, you guys are acting like I should just fall in line with what you want, because it’s what you want. You needed to move on, but now that I’m here, you want me to be whatever you say I’m still allowed. Did it not occur to you that I might need something too, and that it might not be that?”

“We can help you heal, Quentin. You don’t have to run away and abandon us. You were dead for almost a year, and we missed you. Now you’re just going to leave again?” Julia asks.

“If he wants to, do we have the right to stop him?” 

Quentin has, until now, tried very hard not to look at Eliot where he’s over in the corner, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He looks… off, somehow, his hair is still too long and the dark suit seems to not fit as well as most of Eliot’s clothes. But that isn’t Quentin’s concern anymore.  _ Eliot  _ isn’t Quentin’s concern, he’s Charlton’s.

Eliot, for his part, has been studiously looking out the window until now, when his eyes drift over the room. His question silences them all, until Quentin says, very quietly, “No, you don’t have the right to stop me. But I’m not abandoning anyone. I want to rebuild our friendships, but I can’t - it can’t be this unequal, OK? That’s the problem here.” 

“What do you mean, unequal?” Margo asks, and she sounds more puzzled than angry now. “You’re one of us, you’re back, we just did this with Kady’s Penny. No big dramatics with him, why with you?” 

“Because all Penny had to do was walk through a door, while I had to hunt through the ambient for the fragmented pieces of me and put them back together,” Quentin says, and he refuses to be bitter. Really. 

“He had it easy, all right? He was - doing shit that he enjoyed in the Underworld, and then Hades decided that as a reward to you guys for minimizing Rupert’s damage he’d give him back. Hell, I was out of his reach being stuck in the ambient but he did put in a good word with Hecate, who as the goddess of magic actually helped me finish mending myself. I appreciate that. But the thing is, Penny is on an equal footing with you guys. I’m not.” 

“Because you were in the ambient for almost a year instead of living a life, afterlife, whatever? Do you remember I was a Niffin?” Alice asks. 

“All too well, Alice,” Quentin says, thinking of the Niffins he’d run into, in the ambient. She’d been one of them, because magic and time aren’t always on the same line, but he assumes that she doesn’t remember that. Or doesn’t know it was him. “But do you remember when you told me, afterwards, that you were never going to be who you’d once been again? I’m not either. And I - I need to figure out who I am now before I can be anything like on a fair footing with all of you.”

He sighs. “You guys had nearly a year without me. Things have changed. Jules, you’re a mom. Alice, Margo, you’re High Queen and King of a brand new world and dating each other. Eliot, you’re teaching at Brakebills and you have a boyfriend. Can’t you see that it feels wrong to just… pretend I still fit?” 

“How are you going to ever fit again if you don’t try?” Julia asks.

“I need to settle myself first, and I can’t do that here.” 

“Why not, unless you blame us for not saving you?” Alice asks, and Quentin just - he’s been trying not to tell them, because it probably won’t help his case, but apparently he’s going to have to.

“Because I had to watch you!” he snaps, clenching his fists. “Because I watched you move on, I watched you and Eliot throw away things that might have saved me, I watched you guys save multiple other people from being dead, and all the time I was screaming, begging for someone to hear me!” 

“Quentin, we didn’t know. You know we didn’t,” Eliot says. “Something about you being a ghost in the ambient made it impossible for us to know you were there. Even Margo’s fairy eye couldn’t see you. Hell, even the Pennys’ ghost friend didn’t know you were there and he  _ was  _ a ghost himself.”

“Yes, Eliot, I do know that, which is why I don’t actually blame you.” Although he suspects he did, briefly, break through to Eliot halfway up the Mountain of Ghosts, it hadn’t been enough for Eliot to realize it was for real and so doesn’t count. Which is why Quentin doesn’t mention it.

“But do you understand how that fucked with me?” he says instead, forcing himself to meet their gazes one by one. “How I might need to not be physically around you guys for a bit while I heal from that? I know it wasn’t on purpose, I know that letting me go was also supposed to make sure I was at peace. It was just bad luck that I was a kind of ghost no one could contact, I know all of this, but it still messed with my head and I need to recover! I need to recover like you guys needed to move on, and I want the same respect for that as you want from me.”

“You’re saying you don’t blame us, but if you stay with us, we’ll trigger bad memories,” Julia says finally, and she doesn’t look hurt anymore, which Quentin thinks is an improvement. She still looks fucking sad, though, and he remembers her tears lit by firelight and - 

They don’t know he saw the bonfire. They don’t know what Penny told him there. They don’t know this is for their good at least as much as his. 

“More or less, yeah,” he agrees quietly. “I was hoping we could keep in touch by email and stuff - Fogg fixed all the legalities of me having been dead, so I have, um. Money from my dad. I got a laptop, so…” 

“We can’t email from New Fillory,” Alice says. “And it still sounds like you’re blaming us.” 

“I can’t prove I’m not, I can’t prove a negative,” Quentin says. “Can’t you at least take me at my word that I want to keep in touch? That I want to still be friends, even if it is long distance that I need right now?”

Alice and Margo exchange a look, and it feels weird - they seem better at communicating silently than Quentin and Alice ever were. He should feel jealous, shouldn’t he? He does, but only a little, in a way that tastes more of regret but also relief somehow. Like it stings, but it doesn’t feel wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

“Stay in one place for a couple of weeks, we’ll send one of the Pennys to you with ways to keep in touch with us all that don’t rely on Muggle shit - these two spend a lot of time at Brakebills since they teach here,” Margo says, gesturing toward Julia and Eliot. “And we’ll see how it goes, Coldwater. I still think you were a dick to steal from us, but what the hell. We’ve all done some shitty things over the years, I guess it was your turn to pull the big stunt.” 

Quentin would be offended by that but he decides to take it. It’s downright kind, for Margo. She hasn’t liked him much since they got their memories back at the beginning of the Monster mess, or at least that’s his conclusion drawn from her complete lack of interest in even checking in with him for five seconds. So an olive branch with thorns - bad analogy, but whatever - is the best he’s going to get from her. 

“We’ll see how it goes,” he says with a nod, and then Margo leaves after pressing a kiss to Alice’s cheek and exchanging a look with Eliot that Quentin can’t interpret and doesn’t want to anyway.

“I won’t let you punish me,” Alice says. “I think that’s all you really want and the second you prove it I’m cutting you off. Just so you know.” 

“Do what you want, Alice,” Quentin says, because the truth is that he doesn’t care. His ankle hurts and always will because a piece of it is just missing - Hecate helped him make sure that the missing piece Alice chucked down the well to Tartarus came out of a fairly harmless spot of his body, but still. And then there’s the fact that if he’d just been a normal ghost in some part of the Underworld or beyond, that piece would have allowed the demons of Tartarus to summon him as yet another victim to torture for eternity. 

She doesn’t know any of that, of course, and if he mentions it he’ll just be accused of being angry again.

“What do you want me to say, Quentin? I won’t apologize for moving on with my life.” 

“I’m not asking you to. Frankly, Alice, I don’t care what you do. Keep in touch or don’t; it’s not my problem.”

“This is not how this should be,” Julia says, watching Alice glare at Quentin, her hands clenched into fists. “This should be good news, we should be happy to be reunited, we shouldn’t be almost fighting.” 

“And that’s why I have to go. Because the window of opportunity for hugs and tears passed a while ago, Julia,” Quentin says. “Now we’re all just doing what we have to do, and all I can say is, I have email, I have a cell phone, and Margo says she’ll give me magical communication options. What happens next… I guess we’ll see.” 

“Oh, fuck you, this is just your revenge,” Alice snaps, and then she marches out. 

“Is it?” Eliot asks when it’s just him, Quentin, and Julia left. 

“No,” Quentin says, shouldering his bag. “Revenge is a waste of time.”

“You are mad at us,” Julia says, and she sounds hurt again. Great. “Quentin, if we’d known -” 

“If you’d actually tried that seance instead of taking the word of a twelve-year-old golem, maybe you would have known,” Quentin cuts her off. “Or maybe not. Margo couldn’t see me, after all. Like I said, Julia, it’s all just bad luck, no one’s fault. All I want to do is figure out what to do with my second chance at life, and I can’t do that here. That’s all this is.”

In the end, Julia leaves him too, and it’s only Eliot who walks Quentin to the New York City portal. “Are you really ever going to come home, Quentin?” he asks as they stand in front of it. Quentin looks up at him and remembers the first time he ever saw Eliot, stretched out on the Brakebills sign. Remembers the last time he saw him with living eyes, that day in the park. 

He remembers the bonfire too, but he also remembers the Mountain. And he remembers that Eliot has no right to be looking at him with so much pain, not when Quentin is the one who’s alone. 

“I’ll come back around, Eliot. But part of the problem here is, I don’t have a home anymore.” Before Eliot can answer, someone calls his name. His strange blond boyfriend, apparently. Quentin manages a thin smile and he knows it’s bleak. Part of him enjoys seeing Eliot look hurt by it. 

“Go back to your new lover, Eliot. I’ll see you when I see you.”

And Quentin turns on his heel and steps through the portal.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


He actually stays in a hotel in New York for a few weeks, per his agreement with Margo to stay in one place. Nowhere near the penthouse where everyone lives when not at Brakebills or the New Library or New Fillory, of course. 

There are a lot of new things in the living world now, and Quentin would laugh about it if he could remember how to laugh. He’s not sure he does, just like how he needs the alarms on his phone to remind him that he needs to eat, because he can’t recognize the ache in his stomach as hunger anymore. 

“It would be easier to cope if you were with someone you trust, Quentin. This idea you have of traveling isn’t likely to be good for you,” Dr. Griffin says over webcam at their scheduled session. Three times a week Quentin talks to the therapist Dr. Lipson recommended, and once a day he takes his meds and a potion meant to mitigate the side effects of the anti-anxiety and antidepressant pills. 

“Thing is, Doc, there isn’t anyone I trust.”

He isn’t angry, he hadn’t lied about that. Or, well, not really. He is angry, but more at the situation in general than at anyone in particular. The real problem is that he wanted to get back to them until he did. Until he woke up at the Brakebills infirmary after landing in a naked sprawl on the Sea and promptly passing out, woke up to find Alice, Eliot, Julia, and Margo in his room and all he felt was terror. 

They think his babbled pleas to please not send him back are early-return delirium or something. And that’s true, because clear-headed Quentin knows they’ll have him back. They’ll even welcome him, since he did the work to save himself that none of them thought was worth doing.

But he doesn’t believe they mean it. He doesn’t believe it comes from anything much except pity. He’s part of their past, a lost friend they moved on from till he was just a pretty little tragedy to bring up when one of them needed to relate to someone. 

There’s a soft whoosh of displaced air, and Quentin turns from his window to see Penny standing there. A Penny in a t-shirt and a black leather jacket, as if he doesn’t feel quite right without the layers of dress shirt and suit jacket even though he’s no longer an Underworld Librarian. He’s holding four small books in his hands, and a mirror. 

“Why the fuck are you doing this, Quentin?” is the first thing he says. 

“Because I have to. What’s all that?” 

Penny scowls at him, but sets what he brought on the bed. “Magicked journals. Red for Julia, blue for Eliot, green for Alice, and purple for Margo. The mirror will take calls from all four of them, and you can call any of them, just say their name with your fingertip to the glass. You don’t have to do this. Remember our conversation at your funeral?”

“Kinda hard to forget when you told me to soak up the genuine grief and tried to tell me that because I didn’t want to leave them I didn’t kill myself. It doesn’t work like that.” 

“I was trying to make you feel better,” Penny says. “Bad call on my part. But apparently the only thing you paid attention to was me trying to convince you that you didn’t kill yourself, or you’d know that you’re being a fucking dick doing this.”

Quentin crosses his arms. He doesn’t want to have this conversation, but in a strange way it’s also a relief, because he can’t really be this honest with anyone but Penny 40. “You told me I saved their lives and changed them. That because of my death, they’d be able to thrive.”

“I showed you how much they grieved for you, because they loved you. Now you’re back and you really are choosing to walk away from all that?” 

“There’s nothing to walk away from,” Quentin says. 

“What the fuck - they love you!” Penny says, throwing up his hands. 

“No. They  _ cared  _ about me. Past tense,” Quentin says flatly. “What’s left is… obligation. They used to care, and now that I’m back they feel like they still have to treat me like one of them. Anyway, I can’t stay. My death let them thrive, who knows what damage I might cause now that I’m back?” 

Penny stares at him, a quiet horror on his face. “That is not what I meant. You stopping Everett and getting magic back saved them, and even if you’d survived it that still would have been true. And believe me, moving on doesn’t mean you stop caring. Kady moved forward without me because she had to, but when we were both alive again… sure, we had and have shit to work through, a lot of shit, but the feelings don’t go away.” 

“Pretty words,” Quentin says, turning away. “Thanks for dropping the stuff off, you don’t need to stay.”

“Quentin -” 

“Get out.”

“This is not what was supposed to happen, this is not what I meant,” Penny says. Quentin doesn’t turn around, doesn’t respond, and after a moment there’s a quiet sigh. “I hope you wise up soon.” A faint whoosh of air, and when Quentin looks over his shoulder, Penny’s gone. 

Good. 

Quentin stays in New York just long enough after that to buy new clothes, since all of his were trashed or donated. He actually finds his old messenger bag - and yes, it definitely is his, his name is still inside it - at a thrift shop and for a moment he can’t breathe through the illogical rage of it. _ How long was I gone before you got rid of any sign I was ever here?!  _ he wants to scream at the others, but there’s no point to it, is there?

But he indulges himself. He buys secondhand worn-soft jeans, plaid flannel and fandom t-shirts, smiling to himself whenever he remembers how Julia used to tell him it was time to dress like an adult. She’d hate this, he thinks, and it makes him buy more of it. What would Alice have hated, or Margo? What would Eliot hate? More to the point, what would they hate that he’ll like?

He comes up pretty dry for Margo and decides the general fashion disaster vibe is good enough. But he knows Alice hates tattoos. So on his last day in New York City he goes to a hedge tattoo artist and stares at the designs for a while. He considers getting the mirror, only cracked and surrounded by flames. A reminder of what he’s worth. Or maybe one of the headstones, because he never actually got a real one and he deserves that much, doesn’t he? 

But in the end, Quentin doesn’t really want to carry those reminders on his skin, on his forearm where he’ll see them all the time. He wants a tattoo, not only because he likes the thought that Alice would hate it but because he kind of likes the idea himself. He’d considered one before Brakebills but could never decide what to get or where to get it. But now, in a new body clean of calluses or scars, picking a tattoo feels like something he can do to mark this body, to make it feel less newborn. 

A new life, and he saved himself. 

He gets a phoenix that stretches most of the length of his forearm, head tipped up toward an invisible sky and its wings just unfurling. It’s stark in black against his skin, and he loves it immediately. It’s more excitement than he’s felt about anything since he woke up.

The nice thing about magical tattoo shops is they do a rapid-healing spell, so that Quentin walks out with his new ink vivid on his forearm, with directions to wash it each day, and it only itches a little, only aches a bit. 

Eliot, though… 

Quentin came back as he remembered himself at twenty-seven, the age he would have been if he hadn’t died. The age he only made it to naturally once. And so, of course, he came back with long hair - although it’s snowy white now, the color of his hair and the dark gold of his eyes the legacy of his time in the ambient. It’s still the length it was, that second year on the Mosaic, and Quentin remembers - 

_ “I love your hair long, gives me something to hold onto.” _

The night before he takes the first train out of New York that catches his eye, Quentin stands in front of a hotel bathroom mirror and saws his hair short with a pocket knife. After, he stares at himself in the mirror, hair hacked short and sticking out every which way, the shadow of stubble on his chin, the tattoo dark on his skin, the Star Wars t-shirt and the worn jeans. 

He doesn’t look like any version of himself, not even Brian. It’s a vicious pleasure to think that the people who used to care about him would hate this. But more than that, it’s a stunning giddy relief that this version of him is new - the clothes are a bit of his old taste but with the hair, with the tattoo, with the amber-tinted glasses he bought to disguise his eyes, it’s still a new him. 

It feels like a blessing to be something new. He laughs, a wild sound echoing off the tile, and isn’t entirely sure what’s funny.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The first train he saw happened to go to Philadelphia. Quentin’s mom’s family is from the Philly suburbs, and like a lot of kids he went to see the Liberty Bell in fourth grade, but he spends a few days in Philadelphia anyway. There’s no reason not to, and the touristy spots let him pretend to just be part of the crush of people. There’s something very freeing about blending into the crowd. He feels like he can breathe easier when no one is expecting anything of him, when he’s just part of the flow around him. He doesn’t have to enjoy everything he goes to, though some of the museums have cool stuff. They don’t seem real, somehow, and he can’t react to them like they are, but objectively they’re cool.

He likes the zoo, for real, and the aquarium just off the bridge in Camden. He stands around in the aquarium for a while, actually, watching the fish and just indulging in the blue light and shadows, the mimicry of light underwater. It’s so different than the orange-red of a bonfire, than the cold fluorescent and grey of the Underworld, the blaze of colors that was the ambient, the gold sparks that killed him. 

Maybe when he eventually settles down, he’ll buy a lamp for his bedroom that has an effect like this. It’s nice, and he likes it. It’s soothing. 

The zoo is full of chattering kids with their families, and Quentin imagines bringing Teddy to a zoo and almost starts to cry. But there are - there’s overhead nets and actual lemurs climbing around above their heads, and sometimes there are animal smells and sounds. It feels real in a way the museums couldn’t, and the aquarium didn’t.

He gets a second tattoo in Philadelphia, though this time he goes to a Muggle shop and the ache is sharper, the care required afterwards more elaborate even with the simpler healing spell he applies. A red panda, on his ankle, because when he saw them at the zoo they made him laugh truly, without wildness or bitterness, for the first time since he came back to life. For the first time since before that, actually, the first truly happy laugh in longer than he cares to remember.

He goes to D.C. next, because this tourist thing seems to be working out for him, so he spends two weeks getting lost in the various Smithsonian museums. It’s in Washington D.C. where he picks up a sketchpad for the first time since he was sixteen - in this life - and spends a while sketching exhibits and the people who stop to study them. 

It turns out there’s a secret Smithsonian museum dedicated to American magical history, but Quentin decides not to go. Maybe on his way back, if he comes back. But not now. 

He came here before when he was twelve, but they only had time to see the Air and Space Museum. And it’s standing amongst the 1940s airplanes that Quentin realizes the memories of that trip, and a handful of others from when he was twelve, no longer have feelings attached to them. He remembers them like you remember something you watched on TV - or, since this is him, like you watched in a movie you had to watch for some class or other, because the things he watches for fun usually have too many feelings attached. 

He remembers feeling a burning pain as Alice tore a bit off him, remembers how he’d dived down the well after it but in the end he’d been too afraid to follow it down - something told him even then that well did not go to the Underworld, or at least not to a good part of it. He could almost hear screams in the dark, he thinks, and now he knows it went to Tartarus, but at this point it doesn’t really matter.

Or at least, it doesn’t matter in the sense that clearly he was able to come back without that piece, but it seems like… 

There are other memories from that year which are still full of all his feelings, so it’s not widespread damage. He thinks the golem lived about a day, from what he could tell, so he’d guess that the memories altogether add up to the life of the golem. It’s like little chunks of events are empty now, a strange feeling but if that and his achy ankle are the worst damage, he can live with it. 

On a whim, he buys Taco Bell, just to see how it tastes. It tastes like cardboard, as if his liking for this particular fast food vanished too. Weird, but again, more or less harmless. 

Quentin decides that, on the whole, he’s very lucky. Dr. Griffin agrees with him, for once. (She took one look at his chopped-up hair and asked for a full explanation, after which she said, “Quentin, if this is you not angry, then what is angry?” so she doesn’t really agree with his conclusions about himself often.)

In D.C., he also stops long enough to look at the journals. Three of them are empty of messages, which Quentin tells himself is a relief. It is, because he doesn’t know what to say that isn’t angry. But for some reason it also makes his throat tight like he might cry. 

But Julia’s red journal has filled two pages. Little notes about her daughter, mostly, but the last message says, Quentin, will you at least tell me you’re alive? 

Shit, now he feels bad. He digs up a pen and writes,  _ Sorry, I wasn’t in my room much aside from therapy mirror calls. So Hope is crawling, huh? I hope you’ve got the penthouse baby-proofed. _

Quentin remembers when Teddy started crawling and Eliot doubled the wards everywhere on their clearing. But at the same time he’d also been the first one to say fuck the Mosaic for a few days and cast a spell to put down extra sand instead when Teddy wanted to play in it for a while. 

He has to set the journal aside so tears don’t fall on it, and he spends a couple minutes with his hands pressed to his eyes. He is not going to cry about this. That life is gone, it’s over, he will never ever have any of it back, and he is not going to cry about it ever again. 

The mirror Penny gave him dings and he takes a deep breath, lowering his hands as the surface of the mirror wavers and Julia’s face appears. “About time, Q. What have you been do- what did you do to your hair?” 

“I cut it,” Quentin says. 

“I can see that. It’s kind of a mess.” 

“I like it,” Quentin says defensively, though actually he likes it less and less every day, misses having long hair to hide behind. He doesn’t regret the tattoos, he likes how it feels to see the ink and know he chose it, but he kinda wishes he’d hesitated on the hair. The clothes he still likes too, and he expects to see Julia roll her eyes when she takes the rest of him in but she smiles faintly. 

“Is that a Martell spear?” she asks. 

“Um… yes?” Quentin says, expecting the faint turndown of the corners of her mouth that says  _ we need to grow up and put that away most of the time _ except it doesn’t - it doesn’t come. 

“That reminds me, you’ll appreciate this so much more than Liam did.” 

Quentin is not exactly sure who Liam is, but suddenly most of the mirror is taken up, not with Julia’s happier-than-he-expected face but with a very bewildered six-month-old in a Star Trek onesie. This, he realizes, must be Hope. She stares at him with eyes exactly the same shape and color as Julia’s, though her skin is shades darker and her hair is all wispy curls. 

“Hi there little girl,” Quentin says, voice pitched soft like he used to talk to Teddy - not baby talk, but gentler talk. “Sorry your mom just stuck me in your face.” He twists his pinkies around each other, a simple little tut that sends rainbow bubbles floating through the air and it earns him a mostly-toothless smile and a bright giggle before Julia shifts things so that she can be seen again, Hope settled on her lap. 

“You and Eliot are the only ones who knew that spell - he taught me, but no one else knew it,” Julia comments. 

That’s because Eliot learned it while he was hitchhiking to New York, Quentin thinks but doesn’t say, swallowing past the sudden ache in his throat. “Yeah, well, I learned it from him. She’s adorable, Jules.” 

“I named her after you. Hope Quentin Wicker-Adiyodi. We, we were going to call her HQ for a while but on second thought that seemed a little weird, but…” Julia stops, and now she seems to be the one fighting tears. As for Quentin, he doesn’t know what to say. He knew what Hope’s middle name was, and until now it felt like just one more bitter pill to swallow, that he’s worth remembering but not saving. But now, with a baby’s laughter still ringing in his head, and Julia looking so careful… 

She’d never been careful of him. Not like this. Even after every hospitalization, she’d been gentler maybe, but not looking at him in this sad searching way. 

“That was sweet of you,” he says, because he can’t think of anything better. I named him after you, he’d told his dad, in the same conversation where he’d basically said he was going to kill him. God, maybe he should have crossed over instead of come back, at least then he could apologize, at least then he could have paid for that and for all the people the Monster killed. 

Maybe that was what he was supposed to do. Die to pay for what he’d done, what he’d allowed to happen because -

_ “You say that like we can just risk people’s lives.”  _

_ “It’s Eliot.”  _

And what had been the point? No, that isn’t fair, they had gotten Eliot back, it was only Quentin that lost literally everything and that had always been on the table, that had never really mattered, had it. It makes him think of South, of Mayakovsky, of the days when it had been Alice instead of Eliot that he was willing to burn himself up to save.

_ “What’s more important than a life?” _

_ “You talk like life means something.”  _

_ “If it doesn’t, then what’s the point? This is what magic is for.” _

Except when it comes to him. He saved himself, and Margo and Alice are pissed because he stole magic from them to do it, but he had to. No one else was coming. But Julia named her daughter after him, and she seems glad to talk to him, can that be enough? Can he figure out how to make that enough?

“Quentin?” Julia sounds worried, and Quentin shakes off the memories.

“I, um. Sorry. Lost in thought for a sec. Uh, who’s Liam?” 

Julia laughs. “Well, with two Pennys it was getting a little confusing, so my Penny - apparently Liam was one of his aliases after everything went to shit in his timeline, so he decided to go back to it. Legally, he and Penny are down as identical twins now.” 

“Oh,” Quentin says. “Well… good for them? Does that make you and Kady halfway to sisters-in-law?” 

“Yes, which is… weird,” Julia says. “Although none of us are getting married anytime soon. Unless Alice and Margo do for political reasons. Eliot and what’s-his-name definitely aren’t; Eliot and I both teach at Brakebills and last time I saw him the two of them were fighting by the Cottage and it didn’t look good.” 

“That’s none of my business,” Quentin says flatly. 

“Isn’t it?” 

“Julia, please don’t.” 

Julia sighs, and nods. “OK. So tell me what you’ve been doing?” 

So Quentin does, and promises to send Hope a stuffed animal from the Smithsonian gift shop before he leaves town. When the mirror call ends, he leaves in the other three journals,  _ Just checking in, no pressure to reply. Q.  _

Then he packs them back up and into his messenger bag, now spelled to hold everything he owns. He threw out the duffel bag - or, OK, fine, he set it on fire and smiled as he watched the Brakebills logo on it go up in smoke. He was safe about it, cast wards and everything, but it was very satisfying, honestly. He got to be the one who burned a thing this time!

Shaking the thought off, Quentin packs everything else up as well, stops back at the museums just long enough to buy a stuffed tiger. He finds a UPS store to send it from, then goes to the bus station and catches a Greyhound bus to Atlanta. 

Why Atlanta? It was the next one leaving, no better reason. He doesn’t have reasons for anything anymore. Even this wandering is just to not be in New York City or Brakebills, more about where he  _ isn’t  _ than where he is. 

So the bus soonest out of the station is as good a deciding factor as any, right?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


In Atlanta, Quentin’s wandering develops purpose, completely by accident. 

By which he means, the hotel he lands in just happens to be running a ‘convention’ that is actually a Push tournament. And he liked it, is the thing, that time he played Push. In spite of 23’s - sorry,  _ Liam’s _ \- scorn before and during, in spite of how Kady and Julia had found that funny. 

_ “He’s the kind that blows up.”  _

_ “Yeah, but you’re a loser.” _

It occurs to Quentin to wonder sometimes just why Liam even listened to him that day at the Seam at all. He’d ask if he could think of any reason to give a fuck, at this point. Hell, maybe the guy picked up enough out of Quentin’s mind to decide to let him go for it, at least if he was disintegrated he couldn’t turn evil, right? 

But that is - probably an unfair accusation. And, really, Liam only did what he asked, Quentin has no right to be upset about that.

The point is, Quentin liked Push. He liked it a lot, it is literally the only time in the last months in his first life that he can remember feeling clear-headed, certain of himself and what he was doing. So he finds out the entrance fee, which is one magical item. 

He has three enchanted journals with nothing in them but his message, but that seems like a bad, petty idea. He also has a busted luck amulet he found in the same thrift store as his bag, that he pulls out having only just remembered it was there. 

“Broken items won’t get you in,” says the hedge on the door. 

“Obviously,” Quentin says, and glances down the corridor to make sure it’s empty. 

“Wait - you can’t just mend a magical object without a fucking ward up to keep the power in,” the door monitor says in alarm as Quentin twirls his fingers in a tut, and Quentin thinks that’s ridiculous but he also vaguely remembers Sunderland saying that mending magical objects was dangerous without preparation unless it was your discipline.

Repair of Small Objects. 

If only his life was a small object. 

It isn’t - his body kind of was, he was able to rebuild that - but the amulet is indeed a small object. Quentin watches the cracks seal up, feels the zing of power as the amulet’s magic repairs itself too, and he feels in that last second before the spell ends the same thing he felt when he started drawing together the energy to fix himself. A tug, deep within, like...

He can - he thinks - yes - 

He makes the spell stronger, in that last moment of casting, and that is  _ new _ , actually. Cool. It would be nice if he actually got something out of the whole dying and being a magical Force ghost thing. Magic comes from pain, well that experience fucking sucked and he spent the months before his death being a Monster’s chew toy, so it’s about time he got repaid for some of his goddamn misery, isn’t it. 

New magical talent is… a colder reward than he would have thought back when he called himself a nothingmancer, but he’ll take it. 

The Push game goes well, Quentin coming in second overall, but that isn’t really important because as he’s walking out, the hedge who’d been at the door catches up with him. “Hey, uh, Quentin Coldwater? That was the name you put down, right?” 

“Yeah, can I help you?” Quentin asks.

“Hi, I’m Jake. Do you take mending jobs?” 

Quentin hasn’t considered it either way, but… why the fuck not? “Sure. My thing is small objects though, so if you need, like, a big statue fixed I’m not sure about that.” 

As it turns out, they need a clock fixed. A grandfather clock that is designed to behave like Mrs. Weasley’s in the Harry Potter books. Quentin settles in, mending the broken gears one by one, feeling the magic inside it. It feels like coming home, like part of him belongs deep in magic now. A better thought than the one where he wonders if he was supposed to stay dead. 

But still, a fucking clock. Quentin thinks of stepping through with Eliot, the rush of magic returning and the way they’d laughed and hugged each other, and he wants to scream. It doesn’t matter now. If their love was ever real, it died with him and was buried in the ashes of a bonfire. Eliot has someone else now, and Quentin - 

Could maybe find someone, but he honestly doesn’t want to. 

Anyway, he’s busy. Because Jake asks Quentin to go to Charleston where his cousin Mandy leads another hedge coven and they have a collection of magical knickknacks they can’t fix because it would be too unsafe for a non-mender. Quentin, pleased with the money Jake paid him and not in possession of anything resembling a better plan, agrees to go. 

Julia, who he calls on his cell phone, thinks it’s a good idea. Dr. Griffin, when he sits down for his scheduled mirror call, says it’s a start on the idea of developing structure. “Since you’re insisting on this nomadic behavior, it’s better than nothing,” she says.

In three notebooks where Quentin still has heard nothing, he writes from Chicago,  _ I have a job freelance mending for hedge covens. I won’t charge if you ever need something done, promise.  _

Chicago is his ninth stop, and he leaves his hotel after writing that message to go meet Anita, his contact in Chicago, who tells him that they have a broken scrying mirror. 

Quentin does succeed in mending it, and he keeps his cool long enough to get his pay and get back to his room, but as soon as his door closes he’s scrambling for the bathroom, throwing up everything he ate that day and clinging to the toilet as his head spins. 

_ “What did you do?”  _

_ “Just a minor mending.”  _

The worst of it is - glass is the easiest thing to mend. All broken pieces whisper to Quentin, tell him how to guide them back to being whole. But glass almost sings. Normally, it even makes him smile. But a mirror. A magical mirror. 

He sits on the bathroom floor and cries properly for the first time since he came back to life, and he wishes it felt better. Except that after he gets up, washes out his mouth and splashes his face, he walks out of the bathroom to see a message on one of the journals he left open, a message not in his handwriting. 

_ Congratulations. I broke up with Charlton, by the way.  _

Eliot. What the fuck, why is that his first message? Quentin scowls at the page like it could tell him so, considers writing back to say exactly that to Eliot, but… 

_ Thanks. I’m sorry to hear that. _

_ Are you?  _

Now, that’s just unfair. What does Eliot want, an apology? Fuck that. 

_ If he made you happy, I’d like you to be happy. _

_ You didn’t seem to care much about anyone’s happiness when you were here.  _

Quentin glares at the journal. “What do you want from me?” he says aloud and then writes exactly that down on the paper. 

_ A lot that you’re no longer willing to give, I suspect,  _ comes Eliot’s reply, and what - what the actual fuck does that mean? Before Quentin can respond, more words follow.  _ It’s fine, Q. Don’t worry about it. I want to be friends again, I’ve missed you more than I can say.  _

“So much that you nearly fucked Rupert Chatwin on the way to  _ laying me to rest _ ,” Quentin tells the page, but to be fair he knows a lot about sex as a distraction from unhappy emotions, knows that Eliot and Rupert were bonding over shared grief because he heard snatches of the conversation, and… And it doesn’t matter anyway. 

What they were is ashes in a firepit. This chance to be friends again is a new thing, and it will never be more again, Charlton or no Charlton, Rupert or no Rupert. Because the one thing Eliot never said, even telling Alice of all people about the Mosaic, is that he ever wanted that second try Quentin used to want. 

And now it’s too late, because Quentin doesn’t think he can ever go back, doesn’t think he can ever trust that he’s one of them again. Doesn’t think he can ever believe he won’t somehow fuck things up if he goes back, because he knows deep down he wasn’t supposed to. He can do long-distance friendship though, it’s working great with Julia. 

_ I’d like to be friends again too, _ he writes, because it’s true, and because he can’t bear to admit that he’s missed Eliot so much it fucking hurts. How is it, teaching at Brakebills? 

That question fills up a couple pages, because apparently some of Eliot’s students are real characters and he has some fun little stories, but then Eliot writes,  _ Enough about me. How goes the nomadic life?  _

And Quentin - thinks of how he still can’t sleep in the dark but light that’s too bright is just as bad and hot showers feel like the sparks all over again. He thinks of memories without feelings attacked and Taco Bell’s spiciest offering like bland cardboard on his tongue. 

But he also thinks about red pandas and light like water and trying to enjoy things again. He can’t eat Taco Bell anymore but the first time he had Chinese food in his new body felt like a revelation of flavor, and when he tried Indian it was even better. 

How he’s learned that glass sings to his magic when he mends it but metal is like the pound of drums, cloth is like the rustle of wind in leaves and crystals or stones are like crashing waves. How magic itself, the magic inside the things he mends, is a bright clear bell regardless of what sound it accompanies. He never knew any of that before.

And - and there’s - 

_ Did you know Lake Michigan is big enough that if you’re standing on the beach it looks like a sea, not a lake at all? _ he writes, because he doesn’t know where to start and that seems safer than his other options.

It’s a start, anyway.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


In Sioux Falls, Quentin is fascinated by the waterfall literally in the middle of the city - it’s such a small city compared to what he’s used to, but there is something really neat about that waterfall, like sandstone steps and the water rushing along down them. He’s actually there to assist in a cooperative cast, a fertility blessing. Somehow it got around a little that he’s one of the ‘Returns’. In the wake of what Rupert did, there were actual Underworld escapees not part of Martin’s army. Most of them were dangerous revenants or poltergeists, things like that, but a few were just… dead people who now have a second chance. There’s a theory that Returns are good luck for fertility or health spells, and while Quentin isn’t entirely sure he fully qualifies, he goes with it. 

So Jamie from Chicago invited Quentin along to participate in the ritual and then sign up for a Push tournament. Jamie drove them out there and Quentin was quiet for most of the ride, the car full of hedges going for the ritual, the tournament, or both. It was nice, actually, to be surrounded by chatter, but waiting for the right time to cast the spell Quentin suddenly realizes he’s lonely. He’s felt it since he was in that car, but now… 

He uses the ache of it to make his magic stronger when he joins in the cast, and for a moment he isn’t lonely because you can’t be when doing cooperative magic. It’s a rush like nothing else, like being everyone in the spell, and Quentin laughs when the others do but unlike a lot of them, when the spell is over there are tears on his cheeks. 

He wants to go home. That’s all he’s ever really wanted, from that day at the Seam. The real secret is that he’d wanted to give Everett the bottle and go the fuck home. But he couldn’t. He had to use the one thing no Librarian knew - because Alice stole his book back when it ended before he ever learned his discipline. That’s why he’d known he could pull it off, and Everett would never see it coming. 

Really, if it hadn’t killed him, Quentin would be proud of how, just once, a plan worked exactly like it was supposed to. Granted, his death had been more a matter of his mind and body giving out at last, seeking rest without remembering what it really would be, and not in itself part of the plan going awry. It still is the best plan he ever came up with, and that probably says something.

But, God, he wants to go home so badly. He wants to, but what he told Eliot is true. He hasn’t got one. 

Except that in Sioux Falls, he sort of acquires one in a Push game. Kind of. What he actually wins is a magical van that doesn’t look like anything special, except that inside it’s like a tiny studio apartment. Quentin blinks when he stands inside it, and he’s never been the best of drivers but one of the other nifty enchantments on this thing is that the van handles like a small car, much easier than even a real van, much less an RV, which is the closest Muggle equivalent to this. 

Quentin has been thinking about getting a car - taking trains and buses and the very occasional flight everywhere has worked, but it’s starting to get both tiresome and expensive. Same with the hotel rooms, but he hadn’t thought there was any way around that. Now, unexpectedly, there is.

The mini-apartment has a small bathroom with a shower stall - no sink, but it’s literally steps from the kitchenette so it works out all right - and an alcove bed, even a little couch if he doesn’t want to sit on his bed. And it occurs to Quentin as he unpacks his bag into the drawers set into the wall next to his bed that this is the first and only time in his life he’s had a space that was entirely his and wasn’t just a bedroom.

Weird thought. 

(Technically, it’s not entirely true. Brian had an apartment, and he had one during his brief stint playing Muggle - or trying to - but both of those feel like part of a lie, and this, whatever else his second life as a nomad is, it’s not a lie.)

Quentin turns his alcove into a nest of fleecy blankets and he buys Christmas tree lights to string along the length of the van, everywhere except the curtained-off driver’s seat. Blue and green and a couple strands of white mixed in to brighten the light a little - he won a Kindle in a poker game in Detroit, and he wants light bright enough to read by.

Blue and green light like being underwater, just like he told himself he’d try to recreate almost a year ago in Camden. It’s when he’s standing back and considering his handiwork that he realizes how long it’s been. That he died about two years ago, came back to life basically nonfunctional nearly a year after that, and the time since he left New York City is almost another year. 

He talks to Julia regularly, sometimes over the mirror and sometimes by phone, not usually by the journals because she doesn’t like them. She invited him to Hope’s first birthday party but he’d said no, though he sent a nice gift from… where was he then? Oh, right, St. Louis, and he’d seen a teddy bear big enough for a toddler to sleep on in a store window and bought one to ship back as Hope’s birthday gift. Julia texted him a picture of her napping on it. 

He talks to Eliot regularly too, always by the journals, and never anything too personal. Quentin talks about the things he sees in different cities or makes little sketches of those things, he talks about the people in the covens who hire him. Eliot talks about his students, or about visiting New Fillory with Margo and seeing the differences, helping Alice with the magic school she’s founding because whatever prevented some of the Fillorians from being magicians doesn’t apply on their new world and the newbie magicians there desperately need training. 

Quentin’s helped too, actually. Alice has not written a single word of personal content but she has asked him about some of the spells he’s picked up, practical things for mending, cleaning, or crafting mostly, the kind of spells an academic like Alice doesn’t think of as important until someone asks about them. Quentin doesn’t mind; he likes the idea of helping from a distance, where’s it’s safer for everyone. 

_ “Their stories are just beginning,” _ Penny had said. He’d said their friends would be able to thrive because of what Quentin did, because he saved them and died doing it, brought them together and then got out of the way. He’s just… staying out of the way now, right? 

Julia keeps hinting about him coming back - usually with invites around a holiday. Eliot doesn’t, but he does ask if Quentin thinks he might settle in one place from time to time. Quentin smiles at Julia and sends gifts or treats by mail without ever actually answering, and he tells Eliot that he likes wandering. 

“Do you still think they’re only trying to get you to come back from pity?” Dr. Griffin asks more than once, and during his third session from his van, Quentin finally shakes his head. 

“No. We’ve been talking long enough that we have a relationship again; their friendship is present tense again. That doesn’t mean I can go back, though. It still feels wrong. But you were right, doc, I do feel better having a place of my own, even if it is on wheels.” 

Now that he has a place of his own, Quentin considers inviting someone else to share it for a few nights, taking a lover for the first time in this new body. But he - the truth is he usually didn’t much like the casual sex he’d had in college, not for its own sake. It had gotten him out of his head, but he doesn’t remember actually wanting it that often. It might be part of his depression or it might be a part of his sexuality that would have been there anyway, that he can only remember truly  _ desiring  _ people he already liked and cared about, but he doesn’t - he doesn’t want to use someone just to get himself out of his head anymore. 

Why, when he can just take on another job and lose himself in the bright certainty of mending or the soothing creativity of transfiguration spells, or the excitement of crafting spells, magic used to make things? He knows enough about all of these things now that he can work in all three, in little things that give him more joy than the big magic he used to tell himself he should cast. Leave that to Julia and Alice, or even Eliot now that he’s stopped pretending to be dumb. It’s not Quentin’s thing and he’s learning to be glad of it.

Magic was his tomb, more or less, or maybe it was what made up the fabric of his ghost self. Now it’s his only lover, which is possibly some kind of morbid but actually just feels… comforting, somehow. He’s always loved magic, why shouldn’t it be the love of his second life? There are worse things to dedicate a heart to. 

And so the days keep turning, weeks and then months, as Quentin keeps doing long-distance friendships and long-distance consults, and never stays in one city or town long enough to do anything more than his work or a few card games or learn a few new spells. He has his own bed now and his own space, slowly filling up with books and even knickknacks, slowly becoming truly his, but the whole point of it all is still that it’s on wheels. 

He doesn’t stay anywhere long enough to relax anywhere but in his van, because if he does, it will only remind him that the one place he wants to stay, he can’t.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


It’s always Julia who mirror-calls Quentin, and Eliot has never done it at all, but on a night parked off the road in the Colorado mountains, Quentin calls both of them. There’s a way to do a split-screen to call two people at once, so he does it. 

“Quentin, this is late,” Julia says, looking sleepy, hair tousled. 

“Crap, did I wake you up?” Quentin asks, cursing himself for forgetting the time difference. 

“No, I was grading papers, but still, late for talking.”

“Quentin, hi, uh… you look different,” Eliot says, and Quentin shifts focus to him for a moment. 

Quentin’s hair, at this point, is grown back out enough to be shaggy, but he only shrugs. “I cut it when I left New York, growing it out again. You look good.” And Eliot does, still in a dark shirt rather than the lighter colors he once favored, but his beard is neatly trimmed, his hair short again and somehow he had looked vaguely dingy before, but now he doesn’t. Actually, Eliot’s shirt is almost the same shade as the one he wore till it fell apart at the Mosaic, and he used scraps of it to make a vest for Teddy’s teddy bear and a hat for his stuffed cat. 

It aches somewhere deep inside to remember that, but there’s nothing Quentin can do except ride it out.

“Cutting is not the word for what that was, it was a damned hack job,” Julia cuts in before Eliot can speak and while Quentin is still fighting back too much emotion to do so. Because she’s right and the bitterness that led to said hacking has quieted, Quentin can actually smile about it and nod.

“Anyway, sorry it’s late, but I wanted to show you guys…” He’s sitting on the roof of his van for a better look, and he angles the mirror so that they can see the stars. Quentin doesn’t remember ever seeing the stars like this, far away from city lights on a cloudless night, the sky is just full of them. 

Or at least, he never saw the Earth stars like this. In Fillory… but if he keeps thinking about that, they’re going to notice, so he does his best to stop.

“Wow, that’s pretty,” Julia says. “You usually take photos and text them to me, though.” 

“I get sketches in the magic journal,” Eliot says, sounding amused. “The Grand Canyon took up two whole pages.” 

“I don’t have the right kind of camera to capture this, and I don’t think a drawing would do it any justice at all, even in color,” Quentin explains. “I just - I wanted you guys to see it.”

“Thanks, Q,” Julia says. “I’m glad you did.” 

“Me too,” Eliot says. “And unlike our responsible Ms. Wicker, I would have been up anyway.” 

Actually, as it turns out, Eliot and Quentin stay up the whole night. Julia begs off quickly, saying that between her students and her daughter she’s exhausted, but Eliot stays up with Quentin, the two of them talking quietly as the night wears on. It’s still not terribly personal, until Quentin can see the light changing in the room where Eliot is and realizes the sun is coming up there. Then Eliot asks, voice hushed, “You never did ask why I ended things with Charlton.” 

“I figured if you wanted to tell me you would,” Quentin says, cautious. His heart seems to stumble in his chest and he tries to ignore it because - because the past is ashes. The past is buried like the body he never left behind would have been, dropped into a void like the magical well that may or may not have actually gone to the Underworld. 

He is not allowed to love Eliot Waugh anymore, but then again in this timeline he never was and he did anyway, so maybe there’s nothing he can do but pretend. 

“It started when Penny came back, I guess. Suddenly he was alive again, and I… I wondered, about you. Didn’t have time to do anything but wonder before those baby first years found you on the Sea, but then you were in the infirmary for weeks and I was spending more of my free time there than with Charlton. He didn’t appreciate it, which is fair.”

Quentin does not let himself feel a little smug about that. It’s unfair, and anyway, he can focus on the embarrassment instead. “A bunch of first years found me naked on the Sea? Yikes.”

“Only because you were so skinny it was frightening. Nothing else about you naked is scary,” Eliot says, voice deceptively light, and Quentin frowns. 

“Stop that. So… didn’t things ease up once I left?” 

“At first, yeah, but then… He was in my head, you know. Knew a lot about me. And I think he was doing it innocently, just so we’d fit better, but he was… adjusting his behavior on purpose so I’d like him more. I asked him to stop, and he said he wasn’t sure I’d like the real him as much… and it turned out he was right. We just didn’t fit. I’m still fond of him, in my way, but he moved to New Fillory and Fen tells me he’s doing very well there. He’s one of Alice’s magic students, apparently.” 

“Do I say I’m sorry again?” 

“Don’t say anything. I just wanted you to know.” 

They go quiet then, until the sun starts rising on Quentin’s side. “El, you’ve gotta see this,” he says, and doesn’t register that he used the nickname. He does see Eliot’s face light up even before he tilts the mirror, but it doesn’t occur to him why that might be so. 

“Do you remember watching sunsets in Fillory?” Eliot asks, while both of them are watching pink-purple-gold paint the sky. “Or the stars? Could almost never get you up for a sunrise back then unless you didn’t sleep at all, but we got some of them too.” 

“I remember,” Quentin says. “You said it had been the one thing you missed from Indiana, the sky almost free of light pollution so everything was much clearer.”

“I miss you,” Eliot says, and Quentin’s fingers shake so that he almost drops the mirror. 

“I miss you too,” Quentin says, because it’s the truth and he can’t quite make himself lie about this. 

“Then why are you still so far away? Come back. Come back to -” Eliot stops, and Quentin can hear him sigh, a sound as shaky as Quentin’s fingers. “Just come back. Why not?” 

“I can’t, Eliot.” 

“Why the fuck not, Quentin?” Eliot says, and Quentin makes himself turn the mirror again so he can see Eliot, eyes almost true brown with temper instead of their usual hazel-gold. “Why can’t you come back?” 

“I just can’t. It wouldn’t be the right thing. I’m sorry.” 

_ “Time to go.”  _

_ “One last look.”  _

But Quentin hadn’t been able to end it there. He should have, should have cut all ties when he left, but even in the fullness of his bitterness and hurt he couldn’t bear to do that. He certainly can’t now. 

“I don’t understand,” Eliot says, cutting into Quentin’s memories. “We miss you, you miss us, it should be simple! Couldn’t you still do your freelance by mail or something? Or use portals? You could still do some traveling when it was necessary, couldn’t you?”

“I don’t feel ready yet, Eliot,” is all Quentin can say, because he certainly can’t manage the truth, can he? 

“You know, Liam thinks Penny knows why you won’t come back,” Eliot says, and the look in his eyes is too sharp, too knowing. Too much the man who was Quentin’s partner for a lifetime, and can read him like a book accordingly. “I’m not sure why, he gets cagey about it, but he knows something that makes him suspicious. Any idea what that might be?” 

“None,” Quentin says, and that’s honestly true. “I know they talked somehow, because 23 - sorry, Liam - came back with a message for Kady from Penny that pissed her off, but that’s all I know.” 

“Hm. Maybe one of these days I’ll ask our resident incepting travelers a few questions. Maybe they’ll be more forthcoming than you are,” Eliot says, and there’s an edge there like at Blackspire -  _ “I didn’t actually agree to anything” _ \- that makes Quentin very nervous.

“Eliot, I’m sorry.” 

“Right. Somehow I’m not so sure of that, Quentin.” 

And then Eliot ends the call. Quentin doesn’t drive anywhere that day, just curls up in his alcove nest and tries to sleep the day away, until the nightmares of gold sparks and funeral pyres and falling into wells to drown make it not worth it. Then he lays there and listens to audiobooks instead, until he sleeps again and dreams about the book characters instead.

At least he got to share a beautiful moment before it went wrong. All they ever had was beautiful pieces, after all, in Eliot’s words. Why should it ever be any different?

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The first time Quentin hears from Margo is a surprise. He’s parked for the night, just outside Santa Fe and trying not to remember Eliot at the Mosaic, singing the song from RENT by the same name. He’s under his sea-colored lights on his couch, reading from one of the little spellbooks he’s acquired - he’s thinking he might start working on learning ink magic, and picking out something for a third tattoo while he does it - when his mirror dings. Expecting Julia or maybe Alice, who calls when she needs visuals on the spells he sends her, he sits up and stares when he sees Margo’s face in the glass. 

“Margo?” 

“Hey, Coldwater. Why is all your light blue and green?”

Quentin shrugs. “I like it. Is something wrong?” After all, she’s never contacted him, so he just assumed she wasn’t ever going to. 

“No,” Margo says. “I just figured it was time I said hello.” 

“Oh,” Quentin says, bemused. “Hello?” 

“You’re not going to ask why I took so long?” She’s looking at him like she’s never seen him before and maybe she hasn’t. Quentin’s latest pair of glasses meant to disguise the gold of his eyes are green-lensed, to match the dark green shade he dyed his hair last week. He’s let it grow out again, but he wears it braided close to his head now, rather than in a ponytail or a messy man-bun. He’s eased off the fandom shirts a little, but he can’t stomach black clothing anymore so maybe that seems different too. And he wears an amulet pendant carved from shimmery blue seashell.

He thinks being a  _ surprise  _ is more satisfying than he used to imagine upsetting someone with his newer looks would be.

“Sure, if you want to tell me,” is all he says. 

“I was waiting to make sure you didn’t break Eliot’s heart yet again, or else I’d be showing up to kick your ass, not mirror-calling you. You’re frustrating the hell out of everyone, but no heartbreak, so we can chat.”

Quentin blinks. “Even when you liked me, I guess it wouldn’t have worked to point out that if I broke his heart, it was only after he broke mine first, so it definitely won’t work now,” he says finally. 

Margo frowns, and if he didn’t know better he’d say she almost looks hurt. He has a flash of memory, suddenly - the Brakebills infirmary, one of the times he’d woken pleading not to be sent back, to be allowed to stay. A soft hand in his hair, quiet voices soothing him, and he thinks that - the hand was Eliot’s and he’s sure of that, he was one of the voices too, but the other… He remembers Julia at another time, and Alice’s small hands around his wrists when he tried to thrash, but that second voice… 

Was it Margo? Does it matter now? 

Does any of it matter, the times he thinks they calmed him in his delirium? How can he even be sure it happened? 

“You think I don’t like you? Yeah, I was pissed about the grand theft magic and you walking out on us as soon as you were functional, but where are you getting that I don’t like you?” 

“I mean, you made it pretty obvious when the only things you had to say to me in those last days before I died were snide comments,” Quentin says with a shrug. “I figured you blamed me for Eliot’s possession and that’s fair enough so whatever, it’s fine.” 

“Quentin, what the fuck are you - why do I get the feeling every time I talk to you that you remember everything very differently to the rest of us?” 

“I don’t know,” Quentin says, and Margo frowns at him, but before she can say anything someone Quentin can’t see calls for her and she sighs. 

“Duty calls, but you and I are going to talk again, because something is fucking off with this picture and El and Wicker are apparently too chickenshit to get to the bottom of it or this would be straightened out by now, they’ve been talking at you for the better part of two years by now.” 

Two years? Has it really been that long now? 

Despite her words, Margo does not call again, but Julia does, five days later. Quentin is actually outside Boston now, because a pair of sister covens in Santa Fe and Cape Cod set up a driving portal and needed someone to test it. Quentin volunteered, and after a trip that made him feel like he just drove through the Stargate, or into hyperspace, he’s now back on the East Coast for the first time since he left the D.C. area.

“Have I been traveling nearly two years?” Quentin asks her. “I kinda lose track.” 

“Yeah, Q, you have,” Julia says quietly. “How much longer are you going to be doing it?” 

“I mean, I don’t have a pressing reason to stop. Nomadic freelancing is working out pretty well as a job, I have my van for my own little space, why would I stop?” Quentin asks, and feels guilty when Julia, for a moment, looks like he slapped her. But then she shakes her head and her expression calms. 

“Is it the job that keeps you moving?” she asks, and there’s a catch in her voice. “Or is it that you don’t want to come back?” 

“I - am still not sure I can come back, Julia. I don’t think -” 

“Yeah, yeah. You don’t think you belong. You keep saying that, and how the fuck are you ever going to belong again if you stay gone? You won’t even visit!” Julia throws up her hands. “But as for the job, if that’s your best excuse, you don’t have it anymore. Fogg was going to contact you himself, or have Sunderland as assistant dean do it, but I asked to be allowed. They want you to come teach mending and transfiguration - you’ve gotten a reputation for being good at both.” 

“I -” Quentin shakes his head. “I don’t know what to say.” 

“Of course you don’t,” Julia says, bitter. “It’s almost Christmas. Fogg wants your answer after the New Year. Why don’t you come for a visit, instead of mailing gifts again? We couldn’t send you yours, there’s two years’ worth for you. You’re not that far away, you said you’re just outside Boston. Where’s the harm?” 

“I’ll think about it,” Quentin says, because it’s the only thing he can think to say. They spend the rest of the call talking about the safe subjects of Hope and the ink magic Quentin’s studying, then he hangs up so he can have a little time before his scheduled session with Dr. Griffin. He meant to use it to read - not study, just read a novel - but he finds himself lying on his bed, staring into space. 

Go back to New York. Take a job at Brakebills, where Julia and 23 - whoops, Liam, he still hasn’t quite got the hang of that - and Eliot all work. See his old covenmates in person for the first time in two years, except for the time he and Kady ran into each other at a hedge safe house in San Francisco last summer. That was awkward, but it was Kady, who never really talked to him much, so they were distantly friendly with each other and then parted ways. 

Go back to New York and find himself overstaying his welcome, because he wasn’t supposed to be with them again. 

He tells Dr. Griffin about the job offer, and that he doesn’t mean to take it. “I’m fine with my life as it is,” he says, though every time he says that it gets less convincing. 

“Are you, Quentin? Are you honestly happy? You like your life, as much as possible?” she asks, her clear blue eyes very direct. 

Quentin thinks about it. He enjoys a lot of his life, actually. He likes how much of the country he’s seen, and he thinks he finally understands why politics is such a mess - the U.S. really is several smaller countries stacked on top of each other and hidden in a trenchcoat to pretend to be one big country, it’s so obvious when you actually get to see it. 

He likes that he’s seen the mountains and the deserts, cities like Dallas that sprawl out over so much space or cities like Sioux Falls that are so small that neither of them really feel quite like cities to his New York sensibilities. He likes how the Grand Canyon made him breathless with wonder, but so did a random woodland road with the trees red and gold and orange with the autumn and the setting sun.

He likes knowing that on a pebble beach on the West Coastk, near the border with Canada, the seals are actually selkies, and because it turns out selkie skins hit his magic like objects, he could mend them for three members of the clan who’d lost the ability to shift. They gave him his amulet in payment, and now if he’s wearing it he can breathe underwater. He wears it all the time, though, just because he likes it. 

He likes knowing at least one coven in almost every state by now. He likes the opportunities he’s had to learn, things Brakebills would never, ever have taught him… but that  _ he  _ could teach Brakebills students present and future, if he took the job. 

He doesn’t like being alone, even with those covens, even in a crowd. He hates that he can’t remember the last time anyone touched him, except by accident or to politely shake his hand. Sometimes he wakes up thrashing, his entire body trembling with the need for a hug or a pat on the head, something, anything. 

Sometimes he buries himself in his soft blankets and thinks he might as well be in the grave he metaphorically crawled out of. Sometimes the music of working magic, or the more mundane sounds of a playlist or an audiobook, aren’t enough to drown out the silence, and occasionally he has to pull over on a deserted road and scream until his throat hurts because he hasn’t spoken in daze, because his aching vocal cords then remind him he’s still real, not a ghost anymore.

“I could still travel sometimes,” he says quietly. “I would miss it if I gave it up completely, but I wouldn’t have to.” 

“No, you wouldn’t. And you’ve said more than once that you miss your friends, that you’re still in love with your friend Eliot but you’re all right with not acting on that. You have always evaded the question of why you won’t go back. Even your anger that you always tried to deny has eased, so what is it, Quentin?”

Quentin shakes his head, and keeps shaking it, remembering standing next to Penny at the bonfire, how he could hear the singing and the crackling flames, how he saw everything but smelled no smoke. Felt no wind. Felt nothing but the tears in his eyes - how do the dead cry? - and Penny’s hand on his shoulder. 

_ “Time to go.”  _

_ “One last look.”  _

And as he’d turned away, Eliot’s voice soaring over the others as they quieted. And how all Quentin had wanted was to turn around and run to him, cling to him and never let go. How that longing had stayed with him, and he believes, he truly believes, that’s why the fragment of him that experienced all that could not cross over, instead sought out his other pieces scattered in the ambient of the multiverse. 

He’s seen glimpses of more worlds than he can count, tracking down his pieces. 

He wants to go home. He always wants to go home. But he can’t because - 

“They’re better off without me!” And he doesn’t know why he’s screaming, or when he started crying, or when he slid off the couch to crumple on his floor. “Penny told me, he said I did what I was supposed to do, that I saved them, that because I died, because it was what I was supposed to do, it was the right thing, they’d thrive. And they proved it, they proved it when I wasn’t worth saving and I - I -” 

Dr. Griffin doesn’t say anything, and when Quentin dares to peek out from his hair, loose today, she looks as composed as ever but her eyes are wider than usual. They look sad, sad for him, and he would say something, he doesn’t know what but something because he still can’t bear pity, except -

“What?” 

Oh fuck, the other mirror. He hadn’t heard it ping, and now Quentin looks up in horror to see Eliot in the mirror, face white and as horrified as Quentin feels. 

“You can’t - you can’t hear -” Quentin chokes out, and all he can think to do is knock the mirror over, watch it fall to the ground and shatter like the Seam-mirror did when Everett flung that thing at it. 

Quentin stares at the glass on the ground and doesn’t look back at Dr. Griffin when he says dully, “I was never supposed to come back, and I was certainly never supposed to be part of the group again. I’ll just ruin things again.” 

“Quentin,” Dr. Griffin says, gentler than usual. 

“Please don’t pity me.” 

“This isn’t pity. This is just honesty. You need to talk to at least one of them about this. It doesn’t have to be whoever just interrupted, but it has to be one of them.”

Quentin sighs. “Somehow, I have a feeling Eliot’s going to insist anyway, after the look on his face.” 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


He goes back to Philadelphia. That seems oddly appropriate, and a test for himself. Because he drives through New York City and manages not to stop. Maybe he’ll end up coming back and maybe he won’t, but he can control himself. It feels important to know that. 

He parks his van and just starts walking around the city, after taking a photo of the parking garage where he left the van because he knows he won’t remember otherwise. He walks, and stops for coffee and a sandwich at some point, then keeps walking. He’s somewhere random when night falls, and he wanders back toward downtown where he can find a hotel room for the night. 

He ends up at the same place he stayed last time, and almost laughs. 

He has missed calls on his phone from Eliot and Julia both, and even from Margo and Alice. Even one from Liam, and voicemails from all of them. He doesn’t listen to any of the voicemails, doesn’t return the calls, just curls up on the bed and tries to sleep. 

The next morning, he walks some more. 

When he was in Philadelphia last time, it was autumn, near Halloween and the LOVE fountain was dyed orange in honor of the holiday. Quentin thought that was funny; he has a photo or two still on his phone. The fountain is turned off now, presumably because of pipes that might freeze. Although it’s not that cold for early December; Quentin is surprisingly cozy in his beanie and the brown leather jacket he won seven months ago in Seattle. 

The fountain is turned off but across the intersections at City Hall, there’s a skating rink. Quentin always liked ice skating, but not today. It does make him smile for half a moment, though, remembering when he and Julia were kids and went skating every winter. On his side of the roads, there’s a whole Christmas market set up, and he tries to fit in with the people here to shop.

It doesn’t really work, so he drifts over to sit in front of the turned-off fountain, wondering if he should listen to his voicemails. 

“You have to drive through New York City to get to Philadelphia from Boston. Or maybe you don’t _have_ to, but it’s the most direct way,” says a voice, and Quentin turns to see Eliot wrapped in a black peacoat, a burgundy scarf around his neck. 

“Eliot. What are you doing here?” Quentin says, stunned.

“I had Penny drop me off when the locator spell told us you were here - he fucking owed me a ride after he told us the shit he said to you.” Eliot’s lips quirk up, but Quentin would not call the expression a smile, somehow. “But that isn’t what you meant, is it?”

“Not really, no.”

Eliot nods once, and for a moment they both just stand where they are, frozen almost on opposite sides of the waterless fountain, but then it’s like Quentin blinked and Eliot strode around to him, hands catching Quentin at the elbows and pulling him close. “There’s a spell on me, no one will hear us. And you are going to hear me. We were never better off without you. _Never_ , Quentin Makepeace Coldwater. That is _not_ what happened.” 

“Eliot, I saw -” 

“I know what you saw. And I know what Penny said, so with that as your context and your brain turned on you at the best of times, no wonder that’s the conclusion you came up with. But it isn’t true, Quentin.” 

“Bullshit,” Quentin says, and he tries to step back but Eliot’s grip is unbreakable. “If it wasn’t true, why was I the only person not worth trying to save, huh? I’m mostly over it by now, but I screamed and begged for you, I watched you guys use time magic in particular to save multiple people, but all anyone thought to do for me was make sure I was _resting in peace._ Why, if you weren’t better off without me?”

“Because we didn’t think we could. Because Alice took the word of a twelve-year-old that your death was a gift and Julia honestly believed you were at peace and we’d only hurt you, and I didn’t know the golem-you who convinced Alice to let real-you go once and for all was a kid and not… actually aware of what happened,” Eliot says. “But when Penny came back, Julia and I started talking. I don’t know what we were gonna do, we didn’t get that far, I told you. But you beat us to it, baby.” 

Quentin shakes his head. “I - I don’t know what to - what do you want from me, Eliot?” 

“Truthfully? I just want you, Quentin. I want you back in my life, actually physically present. I want you any way you’ll let me have you but I want you actually  _ there _ , close enough to touch.” 

“Why? I mess things up, I always did, I always have -” 

“That’s not how I remember it. Or at least, you didn’t mess up any more than the rest of us did. We’re human, it’s what we do. As to why, well…"

Eliot pauses, and Quentin realizes his eyes are shiny with unshed tears. "I was going to tell you when I woke up, but you were gone. I was going to tell you when you woke up, but you only wanted to leave and I didn't want to push."

"Tell me what?"

"I love you. I'm in love with you, and if it's too late it's too late, but I need you to know that, and I need you in my life however I can get you."

Quentin feels dizzy, feels shocky. His whole body is tingling with Eliot's nearness, with the most physical contact he's had in so long; Eliot's big hands on Quentin's arms, his breath tickling his skin. The faint scent of aftershave or cologne, Quentin isn't sure which. But -

"No you don't. You made it very clear that you don't. Not, not in love, anyway."

"Yeah. I lied to you."

_ "What?" _

"Remember that day in the park when I broke out? To do it, I had to go through my worst memories, and you know which one had my way out? My biggest regret? Saying no to you. I still think we needed to catch our breath, not decide right then, but… But I knew you meant it. I knew I was turning away from something real because I was scared, and I promised to be braver, but then - then -"

Tears slide down Eliot's cheeks and Quentin feels his own tears starting to fall in response but if Eliot notices he's crying he ignores it. "I woke up and you were dead. And you said - I am sorry I gatecrashed a therapy session, by the way - but you said you weren't worth saving. That wasn't it at all, Q, I swear."

Eliot lets go of one of Quentin's arms to cup his face instead, his thumb running over Quentin's cheekbone, his palm so warm against chilled skin. Quentin leans into it, shaking not from the chill in the air but the contact, gentle physical affection he's been without since he came back to life. This new body has never known it when he was coherent, and Quentin trembles under it. 

"I went to see Jane, and she told me all this shit started because she took advantage of you when you were grieving - for me. The last time I tried to save you it completely backfired. I was terrified to try, especially when Julia and Alice, both of them fucking brilliant and with as much reason to love you in their ways as I have, didn't think it was a good idea. So I told myself moving on and being better next time in your honor was brave too, and the right thing. But it wasn't. I should have tried for you, but I'm so grateful you saved yourself."

Quentin can't find words. "Eliot, I…"

"You don't have to say anything about love yet. Yes, no, maybe, take your time, Q. I'm not going anywhere. What I am asking now is that you come back with me. That you  _ come home  _ with me. Let me - let us - prove that it can be home for you again. Please."

Quentin closes his eyes, trying to breathe. He wants - he wants - God. So much. He wants the love Eliot says he already has, wants the second try he asked for in the throne room. He wants to see Julia and meet Hope in person, wants to find out whatever Margo was getting at the other day. Wants to eventually mend fences with Alice.

Maybe he would even like to teach. 

But in this moment, more than anything, childish as it feels, he wants -

"OK. OK. I'll come back back with you. Now, today, I'll even drive. But, um. Can I have a hug first?"

Eliot makes a sound like a sob and a laugh all at once, and wraps Quentin up in his arms. Quentin clings, just like he wanted to when he was a ghost at his own funeral, and finally dares to think he might be allowed to belong again. To love again. 

To go home.

**Author's Note:**

> Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter!


End file.
